Do Whatever You Want. As Much As You Can. (English)

Cooking is now one of my crafts — surprisingly, I never thought it would be. After all, I grew up watching my mother complain about it so much that her brow would furrow, her eyebrows pressing together so tightly I thought they’d merge into one. Complaints and yelling at home were just… normal.

The oven burning, talking to fish heads until you lose your own, the way your coworkers look at you when you make a good dish, the texture and roundness of pepper. Gutting animals almost daily if the restaurant’s any good and demands fresh fish, game meat — and while your hands are stained red, the chef just signing papers with a terrifying ease.

All of this just to say: cooking saved my life.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the two years I’ve been studying it, it’s that I should’ve done it long ago. That’s why the blog title is “Do whatever you want. As much as you can.”

I spent five years in Early Childhood Education career. Two of those with generalized anxiety disorder; people were scary, assignments too — everything felt more serious than it really was. I liked to annoy people: classmates, teachers, anyone with even a hint of authority. It wasn’t all bad. I didn’t make any friends (thank God), but I did discover I’m autistic in my second year. And instead of scaring me, it filled me with joy and questions. Because suddenly, I had answers.

Then came that supposedly “fatal” day when I couldn’t turn in my thesis. One of my biggest stressors was the money I had to spend on university — because it wasn’t mine, it was my mother’s. And here in Spain, if you fail a subject, you pay double. So yeah, the anxiety was real.

The professors gave me no solutions, left me drifting for a year, so I told them “fuck you” — as politely as possible. I realized, once again, the system doesn’t work.

“Talk to the committee.”
“Can I talk to them?”
“What for?”

What do you mean what for? Didn’t you just tell me to talk to them?

I stopped replying to their emails, ignored their WhatsApp messages. Became distant with everyone at college. I’d held on that long because I liked certain people there, but eventually, I realized that at that moment — in that instant — no one was going to care about me. Only I was.

I left my writing club — which I ran. I left my theatre club — which I also ran. Complaints, echoes, ignored messages, and not a single tear.

“What are we supposed to do now?”
“Figure it out.”

That was the last and only thing I said. I’ve always been blunt with my decisions and not exactly kind when it comes to that place. Some professors, with egos bigger than the entire building, stopped talking to me because I called them out and told them a few uncomfortable truths. Ridiculous, right?

(And no, it’s not a coincidence that my first artistic name was Hamilton. If you know, you know.)

This system claims to love criticism, but when you give it to them, they wrinkle their faces and call you a bad person. I didn’t care — not from the first year when anxiety was eating me alive like a demon, or when I developed depression. I didn’t give a single damn when they said “I didn’t expect this from you” instead of asking about my new passion or my life beyond the stupid gates of a broken system.

My new life in the kitchen.

After five years, I had such a strong depersonalization episode that I completely lost myself. Out of my body, feeling more grey and lost than ever, staring at the park across from the hospitality school like it was another planet.

I’d love to talk about how awful those institutions are for people like us — the neurodivergent ones — but that’s a story for another blog.
This one’s about this.

Cooking helped me through it.

I started with pastry first. My teacher — let’s call him Mr. J — was, and still is, a good person. A great one. But again, egos clashed. Funny enough, we studied the same degree, though he’s older. The school was… different: 10 misfits, many without nationality or at risk of social exclusion. Autistics, weirdos, forty-year-olds still living with their mothers, and moms who’d say, “you remind me of my kid.” Even an old lady — and my own cousin, with whom I made peace after nearly 10 years of silence.

Cooking was therapy.

Laughter, anger, expression — everything we couldn’t do in that gloomy university. No rules, no APA format, just shouting, noise, knife threats, and so many desserts that the fridges were overflowing with cakes that ended up in the trash. J and I became friends, along with another classmate I’ll call Fillmore, because he reminds me of that crazy alien guy from Smiling Friends.

We talked about video games, movies — and something I do often is mirror people’s body language to see if they like me (it’s a social trick, I make psychological maps of people). And yeah — after all our fights, Mr. J started mimicking how I moved one day while we were watching a Lera documentary side by side.

After that course, after the huge multicultural dinner and surviving some truly horrible classmates, I decided to jump straight into cooking. I’m still studying it now, and honestly? I lost my entire summer because this passion consumes me — and I love it.

That’s where I met the one I’ll call Kaurismäki — because her favorite film director is Aki Kaurismäki.

She’s perfect as both a teacher and a chef. Small portions to avoid waste, original dishes, attention to order and haute cuisine. She’s everything Mr. J wasn’t in pastry.
While he and another teacher now stick to theory (since we share the kitchen), she takes us to dairies, factories, organizes sensory tastings, brings in guest speakers on ecological consumption and nutrition, and even writes her own materials.

No endless PowerPoints. No YouTube videos explaining how to cut fish (like the woman who once replaced her and couldn’t even hold a knife properly).

If I had to define her in one word, it would be holistic. In two: motherly.
Every time I cut myself, she’s there. Every time I feel sick (or fake it to skip class), she’s the first to ask. She’s the one cheering us on when we’re exhausted.

“We’re a team. Without you, this doesn’t work.”

Have you ever heard a teacher say something like that?

To know I can joke with her, rush her playfully while she plates a dish — and she won’t yell. To talk about plants and witchcraft with her, to voice my strangest thoughts to my classmates, to jokingly ask for magic mushrooms after class and not get weird looks (yeah, that’s the level of anarchy we’ve reached).

Cooking is a place for punks and misfits. Especially since I met Anthony Bourdain.
The one who said kitchens were ships and cooks were pirates — with knives sharper than paper and earrings to prove it. The one who said he hated his first oyster for making him realize food mattered.

If I had to define my first oyster, it would, of course, be The Bear.

The Bear marked me in so many ways — colors, flavors I wanted to taste, techniques I wanted to try. It was salvation amid the academic hell.

“I want to do that.”

I watched it with my best friend, who I consider my little brother. Even after a big fight that drove us apart, that show kept us connected — Mickey and Carmy, both lost, both hopeless. I always tell him to get into cooking, because it’s the home that took me in.

It welcomed me through my name and gender change. It held me through depressive episodes. It became my refuge.

So if you ever feel lost, really — study cooking.

But don’t do it somewhere prestigious. Study in small places — where when water hits the electric stoves, the power goes out, and you have to emulsify a sauce in the microwave.
Study where teachers are nameless chefs. Where they teach you to butcher animals by hand, not through videos.
Study where the ovens are the ugliest, oldest things you’ve ever seen — but they work.

Through cooking, I started writing and drawing again. With Kaurismäki, creativity is daily life — we even made our own spice rack with herb blends.

I trained my memory, speed, passion, and coordination so much that I can now prepare four dishes and a dessert entirely from scratch on my own.

And all this — just because I watched The Bear and wanted to be like Carmy.

Do whatever you want, as much as you can. Trust me.